Wearing Down

Grant sleeps ninety minutes and wakes like a man who has no right to be awake.

That part, at least, makes sense.

The penthouses are still too beautiful for the day he just had. Floor-to-ceiling glass, pale stone under his bare feet, the city laid out in a dark glittering sheet beyond the terrace. Two luxury units on the top floor, cut open through the shared wall so they function as one territory. The opening is raw at the edges. Dust from the demolition sits in a faint line on an otherwise immaculate floor. Low designer furniture. A kitchen island big enough to stage a war.

Eighteen claimed women from the apartment and the school already slept under this roof before Jaycee. Jaycee made nineteen. Five unclaimed are still in the guest suite because he said they could be.

His new world seems like a dream, but his body says otherwise. It feels used. Sore feet. A bruise on his forearm from the fence. A dull ache behind his eyes. Exhausted.

Mary is in the chair by the foyer with the rifle across her lap. Behind her, through the cut in the wall, the second penthouse is dim and watchful.

“You slept,” she says. “I was going to wake you at two. It’s 1:48.”

“I feel like I got hit by a building.”

“Good. That means you’re still you.”

He stands anyway. The room tilts once, then settles.

“Status.”

“Jose and Garret are still in the Explorer. They haven’t started it. Jaz has the stairwell. Eve has the terrace and the lot camera feed. Olivia and Leanne took Kyle where you told them to. Jaycee’s on the sectional in the other unit with Lily. She ate. She asked for you twice and stopped when Jaz told her to wait. The five unclaimed are in the guest suite. Door open. The rest of ours are split between both sides.”

Nineteen claimed. Five unclaimed. Two leftover boys in a Ford.

Grant goes to the kitchen, turns the stiff brushed-steel faucet, and gets exactly the resistance he has always gotten. Water. No miracle. He drinks, shuts it off, and the handle sits where it is supposed to sit.

Mary watches him do it like she is waiting for the world to hiccup.

It doesn’t.

“Any movement on the street?”

“Some. Farther off. Nothing at the building.”

The intercom buzzes at 2:24.

Garret. Hands empty on the lobby camera. Voice raw.

“We need to piss and Jose’s freaking out. We’re not trying anything. I swear. Kyle was—Kyle was Kyle. We just need—”

“Stay there,” Grant says.

He takes the private stair at a normal exhausted pace. Jaz is already covering the landing. In the lot, Garret starts to step in like proximity might make the request nicer. Grant puts a hand on his chest and stops him the old-fashioned way: weight, timing, the fact that Mary is on the feed with a rifle. Garret backs up, remembering what happened to Kyle. Nobody gets shot this time, but Mary is ready.

“Use the side of the building if you have to. You do not come up. Jaz will send water. That is the whole conversation.”

Garret nods too fast and retreats to the Explorer.

Upstairs again, Grant leans on the stone island and waits for something to announce itself. A hum. A map. A second wind.

Nothing.

Mary sets the rifle against the chair.

“You keep looking at your hands,” she says.

“I keep waiting for the day to have fine print.” He flexes his fingers. Same knuckles. Same cheap watch. “Nineteen women. One dead idiot in an alley. Two boys in a Ford who are only alive because they were too slow to copy him. If this was a video game, I’d have unlocked a menu by now.”

“It’s not a video game.”

“I know. That’s what worries me. Games tell you the rules.”

From the other penthouse, Jaycee laughs at something Lily says. The sound is just a sound. He does not feel her on a map. He only knows she is there because Mary told him, and because claimed women do not wander far unless they are sent.

Mary’s voice drops.

“The five in the suite are the real problem. You brought them here unclaimed as a promise. Promises look like weakness on a night like this.”

“I know that too.”

“Then we watch them. And we watch you. If claiming starts doing something to you, I want to see it the moment it happens. Not two hours later when you’re pretending a bruise is normal.”

Grant almost tells her there will not be a twentieth tonight.

He does not, because he can already see the sentence rotting.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “After dawn. After we find out if those two in the Explorer are useful or just leftover.”

Mary nods. “And if nothing happens?”

“Then I’m just a guy with two penthouses, nineteen women, and a parking lot full of bad decisions.” He glances at the raw hole in the wall. “Which is already more than I was this morning.”

He goes to the glass. The Explorer sits in the lot far below. Eve’s reflection is a still line against the night. The city makes the small ugly noises of a first night that has not decided what kind of world it is yet.

He only feels the bruise, the fatigue, and the quiet, bookkeeper suspicion that nineteen is an incomplete number.